A top environmental expert in America is advising the
next president of the US to put a high priority on efforts to deal with global
warming. David Wheeler is a senior fellow at a leading US think tank, the
Center for Global Development (CGD). He says Africa will be at the center of
American attempts in the future to lessen the damage done by climate change.
Wheeler maintains that the response to global warming and environmental
degradation represents an “opportunity for greatness” for the new man in the
Oval Office.

Wheeler
says the new president “can’t afford to waste a minute” as the world continues
to slide towards what could be “environmental disaster” in the near future.

“We have very few more years, at this rate, before we will
probably go past an irreversible tipping point to lead to enormous increases in
global temperatures and probably a series of environmental catastrophes. So
this is really the time we need to move,” says the specialist in environmental
economics, climate change and natural resource conservation.

Wheeler’s
conducted his research and led projects throughout the developing world,
including in sub-Saharan Africa. He says developing countries are “critical” to
US engagement relating to global warming.

He
warns that even if the US and other developed nations were to “very
aggressively” lower their carbon emissions and could even drive their carbon
output “down near zero,” emissions from developing countries are “growing so
quickly that within about 20 years, we would have the same climate crisis
occurring. Without addressing the problem in developing countries, we have very
little hope of solving the global problem.”

Agricultural crisis looms in
Africa

Wheeler
forecasts several “critical effects” of “unchecked” global warming. At the
forefront, he says, “which relates centrally to the problem of poverty,” is
agriculture.

“Agriculture
is key; we foresee big problems here unless measures are taken…. As climate
changes, as the atmosphere heats up and as rainfall patterns change, the
anticipated effect on agriculture in poor countries will be devastating in many
cases.”

Recent
research into agriculture and global warming by one of Wheeler’s colleagues at
the CGD, William Cline, found that agricultural output on the Indian
subcontinent would drop by about 40 per cent by 2070 as a direct result of
climate change.

“This
is really unimaginably large, and obviously in the context of India, this would
be terrifically tragic. One sees similar numbers in Africa,” Wheeler warns.

He
says rising temperatures will also cause sea levels to rise, although he
acknowledges that this phenomenon is “more contentious because we’re not quite
sure at what speed ice caps may break up. The consensus (though) among
scientists keeps advancing the time forward when we will start to experience critical
problems with sea level rise.”

Wheeler
says many scientists agree that within this century, “we may see a meter of sea
level rise.” If this is combined with “storm surges,” he explains, that means
an “enormous number of people – in the many tens of millions in coastal
populations in poor countries – will be subject to recurrent flooding and
disastrous conditions over the next half-century to three-quarter century.”

But
there are skeptics who take issue with Wheeler’s dire predictions and who assert
that he’s exaggerating the problem of global warming. These more conservative
elements are concerned that under a new administration, US government environmental
protection agencies will “over-regulate” and impose a plethora of new taxes on
Americans. They point to evidence that appears to cast doubt on the phenomenon
of global warming, and say laws limiting carbon emissions will double gas
prices and raise the price of electricity in the US by as much as six-fold.

The
conservative Heritage Foundation has released a study it says shows that
proposed limits on carbon emissions will reduce US GDP by almost seven trillion
dollars over the next 20 years and lead to almost three million lost jobs and
great harm to the US economy.

The
disadvantages of so-called clean energy, they argue, outweigh the benefits of
such a program.

Clean energy revolution

But Wheeler
maintains that the US must lead what he terms a “clean energy revolution” if
the world is to save itself from environmental disaster.

undertaken in renewable energy – solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and so
forth – energy sources that are really independent of fossil fuels, that have
low or even zero carbon emissions.”

Wheeler acknowledges, though, that the investments
required for renewable sources of energy are at the moment too expensive for
developing countries. The new president, he says, will have to support these
nations’ efforts to be more environmentally friendly.

“The common problem is to change the relative price of
renewable energy so that it’s cheaper than coal and other fossil fuels. Once
that is done, the private sector will be able to take over and make the
requisite investments.”

He explains that richer countries have the resources to
enable them to implement laws that effectively regulate carbon emissions and
have the effect of “making fossil fuels like coal more expensive.”

But Wheeler says poorer countries generally don’t have the
necessary institutions and/or resources to enable them to enforce such
regulations.

“Therefore in developing countries one needs to look at
the other side of the equation: If we can’t make carbon more expensive, can we
make renewable energy cheaper?”

This, Wheeler stresses, is possible through a “focused
program of investment…. through multilateral development banks and other aid
agencies – on the renewable (and clean) energy sources whose costs can be
driven down to competitiveness with coal and other fossil fuels very quickly.”

Washington must engage Africa
to fight climate change

He
calls on the next president to provide incentives to African countries to
support them to switch to producing cleaner energy. This, Wheeler states, will
have the added benefit of helping Africa conserve its forests, many of which
are being cut down at a rapid rate by timber companies and poor people who need
wood to sell for income, as well as to build houses and burn for heating and
cooking purposes.

Wheeler
explains, “In Africa, south-east Asia and Latin America, we have a similar
problem. In the whole central tropical belt of forest, we have an enormous
stock of carbon locked up in those trees. As people clear the land, as
population grows and as people exploit this new resource, they clear forest and
burn the wood and release all that carbon into the atmosphere. This represents
a very substantial chunk of total emissions of carbon. At this point in our
history, globally, probably about 20 per cent of the total. So one certainly
needs to address that.”

But
he acknowledges that the US will in future have to be “very sensitive to the
problem of poverty. People who are clearing these forests are doing so because
they’re (poor)…. It makes sense (at this point in time for them) to convert
forest to other uses.”

Wheeler
says, “If the (richer) countries are serious about trying to reduce emissions
from deforestation, the key is to develop a program that will actually pay the
developing countries to conserve those forests, at a rate commensurate with the
value of that land and other uses.”

He
adds that while the World Bank is undertaking such a program, its funding is
“still rather modest.” However, Wheeler adds, “most of the people who have
analyzed the relative costs of controlling carbon emissions have concluded that
such a program would represent a bargain and should be pursued, because it is
relatively cheap to pay the cost that would compensate people for not
deforesting.”

Rich countries should ‘compensate’
developing countries

Some
developing countries have said their continued progress depends to a large
degree on further industrialization, on building more factories, and so on, and
therefore probably harming the world around them in order to lift themselves
out of poverty. This, they emphasize, is exactly the path that has enabled
developed countries like the US to become rich. They say it would be
hypocritical of the wealthy nations to now demand that Africa, for example,
stop its industrialization.

Wheeler’s
response is emphatic.

“I
think those arguments (by developing countries) are correct. The developed
countries (have) really contributed by far the most to the current loading of
the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. One has to acknowledge that. There is no
way that one can expect poor countries to suffer additional cost for making
this transition, if…developed countries are not themselves willing to incur
such costs.”

He
says rich countries will simply have to compensate developing countries that
“undertake a clean development path for the difference in the cost between the
path that they would undertake otherwise – that is to say a path intensive in
the combustion of fossil fuels or forests – and a path that would be cleaner.
The latter is unquestionably more costly.”

Wheeler
says the “critical policy problem” that the world, and the new US president,
will face over the next few years will be “to organize a system of financial
flows to cover that additional cost so that in fact developing countries can
choose the clean path without sacrificing development.”

He
says the first step the next American administration must take with regard to
global warming is “absolutely clear: In the United States we must pass
meaningful carbon regulation that sets a substantial price for carbon and
begins to create incentives for us to switch from dirty to clean fuels in the
power sector and other sectors.”

Wheeler
maintains that if the US does not do this, it will have “no credibility” in the
eyes of the rest of the world at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in November 2009.

“We
will be unable to persuade developing countries to undertake any (carbon)
limitations if we are not ourselves willing to do that.”